i could love you all the time
 The summer heat is sticky across his skin as the sun reaches its zenith, baking the meadow in a heat that blankets him with humidity. The sweat collecting across his skin makes the gold of his body shimmer even brighter with each lazy step further into the tall grasses. The ink black patches of him swallow the light whole, however, and let the stars shine bright against their depth. He’s careful to keep his wings slightly unfolded so as not to hold in any more heat against his torso while also shading him from at least some of the sunlight.
A rough sigh slips from his lips as a breeze reminds him just how pleasant the weather had been just this morning when he first traveled from Loess. Maybe the present weather is making him cranky or perhaps the circumstances back at home have soured his mood. Everything seems to remind him of the gloom hanging over him – the way the fawn follows the doe, the falcons mated for life. All is right in their worlds and yet his is falling apart. He snorts softly and turns his head to avoid the sight of it all. The midnight flame of his newborn anger churns delightedly against his ribs as a scowl spreads over his handsome face.
But he doesn’t succumb entirely. Not yet. He grasps for some light still shining through in him when he glances at the rose gold ring shining across his gold and starry chest. Malone assures himself that there is beauty in the eyes of a mischievous genie and perhaps there is comfort to be found in the arms of other men and women. His parents had taught him that, after all, hadn’t they?
Too bad he can’t give his heart freely to them all. Malone laughs softly at the thought as a second breeze weaves its gentle fingers through his dark forelock, kissing cool against his face. The tall grasses rustle against one another and along his muscled sides. His wings spread a little further to soak up the gust while it still cares to rustle his feathers for a while.
malone
@[Astana]
ASTANA // LETS GO CHASING STARS THIS EVENING
Holding the chain links of the swing, the little girl traveled higher and higher, bare legs rushing through the cool and crisp air, a wide grin laying over her soft pink lips. That blonde, almost snowy hair poured from her head, streaking behind her and then rushing past her dimpled cheeks. She is a frail and delicate child, like a little china doll or menagerie piece. Pale, sun kissed pink skin, brown, dirty bottomed feet from moving around the dirt and letting the mud soak between her toes. Earthy. Her parents watch her a little ways off, they study her wondering what she will become, their little wild child, and pray it isn't a tattooed and pierced groupie for some punk rock singer.
Pumping her legs even more so, the little child let the wind rush into her lungs and sting her chest, and then, with a wild, jovial whoop, she thrust her body off of the swing, flying through the air with nothing constricting her.
Nothing but gravity.
It would be a hard fall. The kind of fall that knocked the wind out of you as you landed on your feet and crumpled to your knees, gasping for breath. The kind of fall that made you flop over to one side and then sprawl out on your back, struggling to regain your breath, and then a fit of giggles would erupt. It was a bright and beautiful childhood. Another fit of giggles would erupt as she leapt to her feet and let those bare legs carry her over to the slide. Her old white shorts that have long since been stained by grass and fun, and a t shirt with jelly stains from PB&J’s, are the only things she needed on her body, shoes were always optional. Hands flying to grasp the cool metal in her hands as she hoisted herself up the steps and closer to the edge, closer to the best, or second best, fall of her life.
It is hot, the sun is bright, and Astana has never felt more at home in a place so strange. The precious metal her skin is made of reflects the sun, causing her to look as if she too glowed like the relentless daytime star overhead.
She las left Nerine again, it would seem her adoptive herd would have more trouble keeping her feet from roaming than would appear. But, Heartfire was teaching Astana to be independent. To be independent— and that men cannot be trusted.
The bob in her step is evident, those little knees lift high as she strolls around the meadow, hardly bothered by the sun. The heat to her is familiar, comfortable, it reminds her of her home. Astana is blissfully unaware of other’s discomfort by the hotter of seasons. She is young, she is beautiful, and she is happy. Why shouldn't she be? So caught up in her own utter bliss, the golden child does not see the boy wearing a scowl with eyes made of diamonds flecked with sapphire blue specks.
Astana is far too loose with the term love, it has turned up meaningless in her heart. Her parent shad told each other they loved each other when they clearly did not. Each of their hearts belonging to someone else, but settling with each other because what else did they have? Astana knows she loves her twin, she knows she loves her parents, but she thinks, ponders, why can she not love all things and everyone? So she spots Malone up ahead and she is swept up in the rush of meeting someone new. But she hesitates.
Men are not to be trusted.
But, no, this wasn't a man.
She ponders it a moment, staring at him.
This was just a boy.
“Your wings, they are wonderful,” she says when she is close enough. She blinks diamond eyes in his direction. She knows nothing about true lovers, passionate kisses, and midnight flings. He is beautiful, much too beautiful she thinks. And she remembers Calvin, a story her mother once told, who had been beautiful. Astana, ever the dreamer, had asked if he loved her. Keav had shaken her head sorely. ‘No, he had loved a stallion named Michael.’ And this boy, it makes Astana think, maybe he needed a Michael in his life and he could be happy too. “You look like you need some fun today.”
underground, the stars are legend
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@[Malone]
i could love you all the time
Malone has never been good at not trusting others despite his mother’s warnings and good intentions. He gives his friendship freely and gladly to anyone who seems even remotely interested in it. His quickness to trust had spurred him to give that beautiful genie his heart so eagerly when he could have given anything at all. He never stopped to wonder whether she would actually give back his brother’s eye or not. Like his father before him, he simply leaped without looking and was lucky enough to survive. Life, for him, is too short to fuss over the possibility of some bad ending.
He lifts his head abruptly when she calls out and he is snatched from his little black storm cloud of thoughts. The boy blinks a few times in surprise and looks at his wings as they outstretch, as though seeing them for the first time. Wonderful? Malone turns back to her and examines her white gold body as it shines delightedly beneath the summer sun. She reminds him of the genie, the keeper of his heart, and he finds himself a little tongue tied all of the sudden. Would it be alright to tell her how beautiful she is?
Only one way to find out.
“Thank you! You’re really pretty,” he says, tucking his wings against him once more as he begins to circle her curiously. He tilts his head when she speaks again and he comes to a stop in front of her with a wide grin across his handsome face. The stars peppered over his cheeks seem to shine brighter with her attention or perhaps this is how he blushes when complimented. Regardless, he grows ever more breath taking with every kind word he is given.
“I wouldn’t mind a distraction from my bad day. What did you have in mind?”
A gentle breeze pushes his short forelock from his face and he blinks those bright blue eyes as the strands try to tangle with his long eyelashes. He gives his head a little shake and smiles bashfully as he realizes he hasn’t even asked her name.
“I’m Malone, by the way. What’s your name?” he asks in a voice cool and lovely as cave water.
malone
@[Astana]
08-07-2019, 06:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-17-2019, 10:19 AM by Kyra.)
Astana has always been a child that gives her heart too freely, too easily, believing others will not break it and they will holding it delicately in their hands as if it were a little baby bird with bones made of glass and wings made of paper mache. She thinks they will do her no harm, that she will keep that piece safe, that she can snuggle them in the corners of her heart and they will never fight to be free and leave her abandoned and hollow. And, in turn, she collects the hearts of others to fill the pieces she has given so freely away. She cups them in her hand like a little butterfly whispering to them her deepest wishes and her quietest thoughts before holding them to her petite breast and promising to never let them go. Not in a hundred years.
Not in a thousand.
His head lifts and Astana is satisfied by that simple response. She craves the interaction of others, wishes for nothing more than to bathe in a sea of faces. Those outstretched wings catch her attention. No one in her family had been able to fly, these silky appendages of his seek to fascinate her. Their silence hangs like raindrop on a leaf, Astana basking in the glow of nature’s sounds and eagerness for what he would have to say to her.
A shy smile immediately shadows her face as he compliments her, blinking pretty diamond eyes that catch the light and illuminate diamonds whenever they rise from long, blonde, lashes. He is moving closer to her, and Astana hardly moves away, still continuing to admiring him with all the curiosity that wafts like perfume on her skin of precious metal. She raises that face then to his, looking up at the colt. She is smaller than he is, destined to always be petite, delicate looking as her mother before her. “Were you wandering in the night?” She asks him, blinking once. “You seem to have caught some stars on your cheek,” she says, reaching forward with that little muzzle, letting it brush delicately against one of them, desperate to know if they feel as wonderful as they look. She pulls back only when she feels the warmth of his cheek, unabashed, the way children were. Physical touch had never been anything sly or wrong in Astana’s family, it was a way to connect, to love, to feel, to be.
What did she have in mind? Astana looks at him for a moment, thoughts turn behind that reckless grin and sun kissed, sparkling face. “I live by the ocean,” she says, an object of her ever adoring affection. “But I have never played in the waves,” Astana admits, she had stayed on the sand as the sea breeze sent feverish kisses into her skin, but she has never allowed the waves to caress her skin as a lover may hold their other. The waves were her forbidden fruit an Astana was Eve, and perhaps, she needed a serpent to give her some courage. That’s how the story went, right? “Maybe if someone came in with me, I may not be afraid?” She says, all signs pointing to what she now hints at to Malone.
The breeze blows past and hugs her body for a fleeting moment, making the day not quite as hot for a transient time. If his voice is cave water when he speaks, Astana is like a flittering bird, too infatuated with flying to decide upon any one branch to claim. “I am Astana,” she introduces herself in response. She squints at the sun for a moment, “You know, Malone,” she says, turns to him, blinking. “I think we are going to be good friends.”
@[Malone]
i could love you all the time
Malone makes friends of even those who would be his enemies. He finds it especially easy to form bonds with those who are as agreeable as he, then. The girl offers a bashful smile and so he returns the expression until she asks him just how the stars came to rest over his cheeks. His gold and black head tilts curiously as he steps closer to her, still admiring the shimmering color of her body. From this new angle, he can see the way the sun catches the fractal edges of her irises and shines in countless different colors back at him. He blinks, the black sclera and blue iris of his own eyes drifting shut briefly in envy.
“No, my mother has stars all over her too. I think her parents had them, so who knows how we all got them,” he says with a shrug and a small laugh. “My dad is all gold and white. So I look like both of them, I think. What about you?”
He feels his chest puff out a little with pride as he thinks on this and decides that he is the perfect medium between Ophanim and Starsin. But he wonders if she’s related to the rose gold woman or if she is entirely separate? Maybe they all come from some land where the woman are varying shades of gold and each more beautiful than the last. He’s never even quite kissed a girl but he thinks he’d like to go there some time and just marvel at them all.
But then she reaches out and touches his face, making his cheeks burn hot as they blush and shimmer. A girl had never touched him before, other than Morgayne kissing the blood from his mouth before. It makes his spine tingle and he feels a nervous laugh creep over his tongue. Astana doesn’t seem to think anything of it though as she carries on the conversation while he stands there, dumbfounded.
The ocean? Starsin had shown him the little gulf of Loess but she had never played in the water with him nor had he ventured out into it on his own. Was he afraid of the waves, he wonders? No, surely not. He’d waded through the river and soaked in the hot springs of Loess before with no issue. Maybe they could explore the beach of his homeland together sometime if the weather wasn’t too bad.
“You should come to Loess and we can go swimming there! We’re the best kingdom, I think, so it’ll be a lot of fun,” he says with a wide grin. He doesn’t mention that Sylva is the greatest territory but he believes that to also be true. After all, his mother rules there and she is the most clever of them all. He repeats her name and tests the way his lips curl around the sound of it, then he’s delighted by the sound of his own name from her lips. Astana. He nods in agreement and reaches forward to touch his lips to her cheek as she had done earlier, curiously feeling the shimmering pale gold of her face.
“I think so too, Astana.”
malone
@[Astana]
09-08-2019, 02:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-17-2019, 10:20 AM by Kyra.)
Despite the way she flutters those long, feminine lashes of hers, Astana is entirely unaware of her own beauty. She grew up surrounded by a beautiful family, her father’s golden skin, her mother’s coat that reflected the night sky, and her sister’s eyes made of sapphire. To her, they were the most beautiful creations that existed. Except, perhaps, the boy that stands in front of her now, with starry cheeks and eyes that captivate her like a moth dancing around a porch light on a summer’s night. If she knew she could capture Malone’s attention, then maybe, Astana would think herself pretty, beautiful even, but Astana, for now, is content to just dream that stars have kissed him when he wasn't looking and wondering if they may plant a kiss upon her cheek one night too.
“You are perfect,” is all she says in response before the attention returns to herself. “I think I look kind of like my sister,” she says before lowering her voice. “She’s my twin,” says Astana, as if Etoile were a secret that only Astana knew about. In truth, Astana too was a combination of both her parents. The golden skin given by her father, but the paleness of it was brought by her mother. Her eyes of diamond, her father’s, but that reckless grin that tips the corners of her lips upwards was her mother’s grin through and through.
Her touch is so quiet and brief that she does not feel the burn of blushing beneath her delicate muzzle and if she did, she would just have thought she imagined it as the warm glow of the stars against her skin. She laughs along side him (she is not entirely sure why they are laughing, but she does love the sound of it), tossing her small head into the blue skies, hair flowing against the clouds. She wonders if the yellow-faced sun laughs with them, or if he is resilient as he is bright to humor.
Heartfire would call her foolish for allowing him so close to her. The lithe girl though could hardly see the harm and is far too captivated with the strange boy with remnants of star kisses on his skin. “That sounds like fun!” She says with a grin. Astana fails to mention that she is impressed with how Malone seems so unafraid to wade out into the ocean. “I have not heard of Loess,” she admits, growing ever more curious, that wanderlust in her blood stacking upon top of each other until it reaches behind her sparkling eyes of diamond.
“Will you stay with me, in case I get scared?” She asks him, peering up at him, for even though their ages were similar, Astana was small, would always be smaller, growing to be shorter than each of her parents. Astana has always been unafraid to admit her emotions, her heart, like her mother’s, was worn upon her sleeve. And, even if it were not, those jewels for eyes hardly worked to grow coy or to hide her feelings away. They are as blatant upon her golden face as the sun against its cerulean back drop.
He touches her cheek and she leans into him, Astana always a glutton for affection and physical touch, whether it be from a friend or a lover, the golden filly hardly shirked away from contact with another. His words are enough for her, and she promises there and then to love him entirely, just as she has with Kildare, Torryn, Heartfire. Astana has always been too generous when it comes to matters of the heart. “Lead the way, Malone,” Astana says, promising to follow him.
@[Malone]
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